Phil Foglio

The Foglios have taken their brilliant webcomic and successfully translated it to a rollicking-good-fun novel. Three of them, and more coming. Agatha, the young Spark who discovers her true identity in the first novel, appears in the Clockwork Princess as a damsel on the run, but not distressed in the slightest. When she falls in with a traveling circus, she loses herself in her work, repairing the elderly machinery they use for transport and other tasks. Along the way she bonds with the show more strange warrior princess Zeetha, and discovers new depths to her faithful cat companion, Krosp.

I won't get into details, I hate to spoil it. Basically, I love the characters, the absurdity of the clanks and the setting, and the whole tangled mess Agatha makes of her budding relationships. I really like that the authors keep her practical and grounded when it comes to those - feelings are interesting, but saving her world comes first, and any way, she wants a man who would build her a really good death ray.

Lines that made me chortle:

An injured character insists that Agatha remain with him, "Because she's got a great big monster-killing gun!'" he exclaimed. "And I want it, and her, right here!"

Agatha's comment on romance. "People keep giving me rings," she confided in him. "But I think a small death ray might be more practical."

Now that I have assured you this is well worth reading, here's the bad news. Unless, like me, you can catch the Kindle version on sale, don't bother with the ebook. It's ridiculously priced, especially for a book with proof-checking issues. I'd bought it in hardback as well, for my Junior Mad Scientist, who loved the first one and is looking forward to these. show less

I don't know how deep the rabbit hole goes on this one, as I haven't read all the way to the end, but I'll put a flag in here. This series is magnificent. For adults and teens alike. Girl Genius was steampunk before it was cool, which means WAY before it became passé. The plots, the ideas, the relationships, the insane scenarios, the madcap action and, damn it, the humor-- why don't more authors take a stab at humor? Sure, it's hard, but when you hit it, you've accomplished alchemy!-- it show more all works and I wish there was more, more, more, always more. BTW, the novelization of the graphic novel, in which text dominates, did not work for me. Stick with the comics. Edit: Yes, this graphic novel falls into the "make all bodies, male and female, of ridiculous proportions! And occasionally flash some underwear!" problem of comic books. I land on the left in that debate, but I have to forgive the Foglios. This work is just too good. One could do far worse than choose Agatha as a role model. She solves her own problems, and that is rare enough in a female character in any work of fiction in any genre that I give the fantasy-stereotype-gender-characteristic-exaggeration-art decisions a free pass. show less

I've been reading Girl Genius for about ten years and, I have to say, it only gets better. Not only is the gaslamp fantasy world consistently engaging and surprising, but the story as it stands in November 2020 is expansively empathetic. It interrogates the intersection between being in a powerful ingroup (here represented as humans) and being worthy of empathy by refusing to explicitly classify clanks, constructs, and other spark-created beings’ level of earned empathy except for show more through Agatha’s deconstruction of other sparks’ anti-construct prejudices. It's hilarious and the art is beautiful and Zeetha and Krosp always leave me smiling. show less

Interesting. It doesn't quite match the graphic novels (it covers the first three books) - there's a lot more explanation, for one thing, more even than is needed because it doesn't have the pictures. Scenes are rearranged and reordered, usually making a) more sense and b) the story deeper and richer. Things like - in the graphic novels, there's one Jägermonster with Gil at the blacksmith shop - one who is shown, and does all the talking. In the book, there's half a dozen of them, and some show more of them say things while others stop them...it makes a lot more sense of (more or less) the same lines. There's whole (usually small) scenes added - trying to rescue Dr. Dim - and other bits added into scenes that showed up in the graphic novels, usually explaining emotions or sudden changes of apparent motive. Overall, I like the novel much better - as I said above, it makes more sense and is richer, especially in characterization. I do tend to prefer text to images. There are scenes where an image from the graphic novel illustrates the novel beautifully - near the end, when a frustrated Gil suddenly looks a great deal like Klaus, for instance - but overall, the novel carries the story better. Which is kind of amazing, since the graphic novels carry it beautifully... Next, please! Oh - I read this as an ebook, with no illustrations. I have a vague recollection that there's an illustrated edition in paper form - if so, that might be the best of all worlds. show less